Standing before the open window in his shorts, holding his jeans and a sweatshirt, he wondered how long before Kate would get over her fear of being in the village and decide to move back home. He thought of her not as in the dream, but as she really was, imagined her there with him, her golden hair catching the faint moonlight, her eyes loving and kind. Dreaming of Kate, he started when a dark shape leaped to the window, crouching on the sill, pressed against the screen.
In the darkness, Joe's white paws and chest were sharply defined, the white triangle down his nose pinched into a scowl. He looked intently at Clyde, at the jeans and sweatshirt. "What are you doing, Clyde? You weren't going to follow me?"
Clyde looked at him innocently. "Couldn't sleep," Clyde said inadequately.
"You weren't going to sneak out into the night and follow me? Pry into my private business? At three in the morning?"
"Would I do that? That's very insulting. In all the hundreds of times you've gone out looking for trouble, in all the nights I've lain in bed worrying that you'd got yourself killed, have I ever followed you?"
"So why were you putting on your jeans?"
"I wasn't putting them on. I was holding them. And is there any law against putting my pants on, going into my own kitchen, and making a sandwich? I couldn't sleep. All right?"
"You never put your pants on when you invade the kitchen in the middle of the night, waking up old Rube and the other cats. Why are you so testy? Why would you want to follow me?"
Clyde glowered. Why did he have to get involved with a tomcat who seemed to know exactly what he was thinking?
"You were dreaming about Kate, calling her name in your sleep. Go on out in the kitchen, Clyde. Drink some hot milk and brandy, maybe that will help you sleep."
Clyde just looked at him.
"You want to know where I'm going," Joe said. "What difference does it make? You can't stop me, and you can't help me. You're getting way too nosy in your advanced years."
"Forty-some is not advanced, as you put it. I had no intention of stopping you. I simply wondered where were you going. Wondered why the secrecy? Why all the silence, slipping out trying not to wake me?"
"For your information, I was being thoughtful. Apparently that concept escapes you. You were obviously having trouble sleeping. You'd dozed off at last, and I didn't want to wake you. Okay?"
"So where are you going? This is some kind of state secret? I know what you do at night, I know about your snooping. Someday, Joe-"
"If it's any of you business, Dulcie and I thought we'd wander over to Hidalgo Plaza and check out the shops."
"At three in the morning."
"Why not? We can look in the windows. Dulcie loves to look in shop windows."
"So you're nosing around Casselrod's Antiques, just because he snatched that old chest from Cora Lee. And would this have anything to do with the break-in at Susan Brittain's?"
Joe sighed. "For your edification, antique stores, estate sales, yard sales… That's where any cop would start looking for the guy who trashed Susan's place."
"That's so simplistic. Max Harper would laugh his head off."
"Not at all. A cop checks out the obvious first, even if it is simplistic. Take my word. Dallas Garza will be having a good look among the local junk dealers." Joe gave Clyde a toothy smile, twitched a whisker, and was gone as swiftly as he had appeared, swarming up the oak tree to the roof, where he would again head for Ocean Avenue. Clyde imagined Dulcie waiting for him there among the trees of Ocean's wide, grassy median, imagined the two galloping up the median to disappear in the direction of the long, wild park that bordered Molena Point on the southeast.
At the mouth of the park stood the cluster of converted buildings that made up Hidalgo Plaza, a collection of steep-roofed houses and old barns remodeled into a complex of antique and craft shops, boutiques, and art galleries. The largest structure among them, the old Hidalgo mansion, was now Molena Point Little Theater. Above many of the shops were offices and small businesses that didn't need the exposure of a storefront. Casselrod's Antiques occupied the entire two floors of its building, with wide showroom windows facing the brick walk.
Up on the roof, on the tilting peak, the two cats padded along the sharp hip. Where the peak ended, they dropped down to the tiny false balcony that protruded from the featureless wall three stories above the ground.
Rearing up on the four-inch protrusion, Joe pawed at the glass, shaking and forcing the frail old casement. Because the window opened in a sheer wall with only the fake four-inch balcony, it had never presented a security problem, and no one had bothered to lock it. The casement gave, and Joe and Dulcie slipped inside.
Padding through the dark attic beneath stacked chairs and tables, between ancient trunks and antique dressers and cartons of bric-a-brac, their paws stirring through rivers of dust, they were searching for a way down to the shop below when they saw, against the far attic window, a figure poised, back-lighted from the street below. Though they had been silent, and hadn't spoken, she was surely watching them.
Scenting out, they couldn't smell anything remotely human. Warily, they crept closer.
"A mannequin!" Dulcie breathed.
"Buckram and wire," Joe said, disgusted. Sniffing at the construction then brushing past the flimsy form, he headed for the stairs.
The second floor of Casselrod's Antiques was not only cleaner and smelled better but was handsomely arranged, with small groups of ornate furniture displayed on fine Oriental rugs, against nice paintings and antique screens.
"Just like the architectural magazines," Dulcie said, lifting a paw to stroke the soft patina of a fine cherry dresser, patting at the clustered grapes that had been wrought by a master carver.
Trunks and small chests stood on the floor among the furniture or on various tables. "Mostly Chinese," Dulcie said. Certainly they were not roughly made, like the chest from the McLeary yard sale. Some were no bigger than a little birdhouse, some large enough to conceal a German shepherd. The cats prowled every dark corner and open shelf but did not find the chest they were looking for.
Descending the last flight to the main floor, they faced a wide bank of windows where beyond the glass shone the street lights of the plaza, and the softly lit windows of other shops. Here on the main floor, they could smell the perfume of Richard Casselrod's assistant, a distinctive and clinging scent, in one of the upholstered chairs where Fern Barth had apparently sat. Joe sniffed at the too sweet perfume and made a flehmen face, lifting his lip in disdain. "Does she buy that stuff by the quart? Smells like dimestore jelly beans."
"Maybe it's something very expensive, to appeal to the opposite sex."
"I bet it has the men flocking."
Dulcie backed away from the smell, leaped to the shelves, and prowled carefully along them, skirting among delicate Dresden figures and porcelain dinnerware. To her right, a table was covered with boxes of silver flatware and stacks of lace and linens. Amazing how much care, how much time and art went into the accessories for human lives. "No matter how much we dislike Richard Casselrod," she said softly, "you have to admit, he buys lovely things."
But Joe had vanished. No shadow moved, not a sound. She mewed softly.
Nothing.
Leaping to the top of a drop-front desk, she yowled.
"In here," he hissed from beyond an open door.
Dropping to the floor, trotting under the chairs and between table legs, she paused at the door to a small, fusty office that was nearly filled with a rolltop desk. "In here?"
No answer. Moving on, she slipped into a large workroom that smelled of paint, and raw wood, wax and varnish. The floor was scattered with sawdust and with curls of wood trimmings that tickled her paws. Joe stood atop a worktable, poised rigid with interest. She leaped up.